Catastrophe

Harley is a beauty. No, I’m not talking about a motorcycle (although I do have this life goal of riding a motorcycle before I die, just not sequentially); I’m talking about my cat, Harlequin, or Harley for short. She is of the tortoiseshell breed, which means she’s black, crème, and light brown. Like I said, she’s beautiful. Damn cat knows it too! So when I cooed at her and told her she was gorgeous I thought I was just stroking her ego. Apparently I was wrong.

Harley was just so happy with my praise that she sauntered off the bed. At the time I didn’t really notice that I had been left. I was far too busy watching a “Project Runway Season Three” marathon on Bravo. When commercial break came I started to get up in search of a soda when Harley jumped back on the bed, a mouse dangling from her mouth. Harley often likes to distribute such presents when we have pleased her greatly.

There was my cat, pale green eyes glowing with pride; a cobweb sweeping from the tips of her whiskers like an elegant scarf. But what caught my attention was the pale brown mouse between Harley’s sparkling teeth. My middle name is Elizabeth, not Grace, so needless to say I freaked out. In true housewife fashion I screamed, “Oh my God!” over and over again in my highest pitch in the hopes that the messiah himself would come down and handle my plight. No such luck.

Instead, Harley dropped the mouse in fright of my frantic screaming. It moved. Moved is not so much an accurate description—it scrambled. I THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD!!!!!!! On one hand I happy for Stuart Little’s distant relation, on the other I am now in the middle of a literal cat and mouse chase. I tucked my knees under my chin and screamed louder because, you know, that really helps. Meanwhile The Mouse is rushing across the duvet cover trying to find a way off the bed. Harley, no longer in shock over my rejection, pounced on it (she’s de-clawed, so it helps the mouse’s odds a little). She sprang back and The Mouse went racing again. This time the little guy found the end of the bed. Faced with the decision of Harley’s jaws and what to the mouse must have looked like a huge leap, the mouse jumped, spread-eagled, on to the laundry pile. Not having seen the landing myself, I still would have given the little guy a nine on diving form alone.

At this point the soundtrack that had been on loop (my cries of “Oh my God! Oh my God!) finished with a shriek that faded much like an ambulance siren. Harley, having lost her quarry and temporarily my affection, sent a severely pissed off glare my way and stormed out of the room in a huff. I convinced myself that I had to see about The Mouse. Shaking slightly, I crawled to the end of the bed. The Mouse had disappeared. The entire event took about two minutes to occur, as well as taking twenty years off my life.

I am grateful for two things here. One that the little fella may have survived—Harley may be beautiful but I prefer not to think of her as a femme fatal. And two that it was not my bedroom that The Mouse escaped into. This has to be one of the only moments where I have been glad that my room does not have a TV like my mom’s. That’s right folks a mouse is now loose in my mother’s room. I can’t wait to tell her that little tidbit. For now, I’m just tiptoeing through the house and staying the hell away from Mom’s room. You know, I’m trying to give the little guy space.

"What's this pill do?"

I'm sick. And I'm scared. I've been having these intense stomach painsI’m sick. And I’m scared. I’ve been having these intense stomach pains for almost a week. When I tried explaining this to various adults the best I can come up with is that it’s like being stabbed in the gut. The pain comes swiftly, and is so sharp I either have to stop what I’m doing or double over with the force of it.

The trouble is the pain isn’t in any one place but all across my stomach. Aforementioned various adults have been asking me different questions. Do you hunch over when you walk, or do you walk straight? Does it hurt to touch the right side of your stomach? When you jump up and down does it hurt? The weirder the question the more it just freaks me out! My mom has been talking in terms of hospital visits or at least my pediatrician. But I’m so chill about being sick (cause I can’t go a season without getting ill) that I think it’s nothing. On the other hand the fact that everyone else seems to think it’s something is starting to damage my calm.

The other thing is I’ve been taking more random colored pills than an x-freak. Always over the counter stuff so it won’t hurt me if it doesn’t take care of the problem. Who knew pills came in fuchsia, fire engine red, and Tiffany blue? They’re pretty but they don’t seem to be doing anything. I mean some make me woozy and others just plain put me to sleep. But in terms of pain relief if any of them do anything it’s only temporary. And none of them can fully stop the pains. It’s only over the counter but still! Shouldn’t something stop this???

Hence I’m starting to panic a teence. Oh. Did I mention the throat pain? Yeah that’s nice too.

I'll Regret Posting This In the Morning

I haven’t written here in a long time. Not for lack of inspiration or anything. More like general laziness. I can’t say that’s all going to change because that would probably be a lie. Strike that it would be a lie.

I don’t want to turn this into some sort of “Dear Diary” thing. If I really wanted that kind of confessional I’d become Catholic or actually use the damn journal I have. No, what I think I will do is…okay so I don’t have a legitimate plan. Heartbreaking, I know. For right now the best I can come up with is a stream of consciousness rant that is slightly different from a frilly diary; it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump away from a diary but I think it’s the hop that makes it important.

I’m in one of my melancholy moods. No trigger that I can put my finger on (Wow I just realized how bad of a pun that was, and completely unintentional too). I mean school is boring. I’ve pretty much mentally checked-out already. As far as school is concerned my junior year is almost over. I don’t feel particularly inclined to savor it either. Yet, what I do want to savor are my senior friends. It always seems that I meet the best ones before they graduate. And then I feel this HUGE loss because I just met them and never got a chance to really know them when I could have had three more years with them. Lost opportunities and such.

What’s really got me down is my relationship or lack thereof to me more specific. See, I pretty much gave my heart away a while back. It was a terribly stupid thing to do since he was…oh there are so many good adjectives to describe him. Uncaring. Cocky. Selfish. Rude. Horrible. Wandering. And so much more. Point is it was a mistake. I read somewhere that teenagers fall in love, really in love, for the first time when they’re seventeen or eighteen. Well ring-a-ding-ding I just pulled that pile of crap from the Cracker Jack box. What I’m afraid of is that what I had with this guy was love, because that’s what my idiotic heart keeps telling me. And I had all these happy notions of love. Notions he decided to put his cigarette out in. I see him on rare occasions in the halls and it hurts. I don’t handle pain well.

So I keep dwelling on all of this. The pain, the heartache, the loss, and it just overwhelms me. It keeps building on itself and I just let it. Add a dash of self-loathing for the lot of it, and PRESTO, insta-melancholy mood. Yum.

Chivalry and All That Jazz

Chivalry a’int dead; it’s just on life support. And I’m sitting here staring at this white knight, trying to decide weather or not I want to pull the plug. How did the white knight end up on life support you may ask? Well I couldn’t say for sure but if I had to take a guess, I’d say he was: bludgeoned by a wife beater; attacked by a drug addict (‘cause he tried to do the right thing by taking away the addict’s crack); shot by a completely unrelated drive-by shooting; and, kneed in the balls by a rampant feminist. But that’s just a guess.

Still, every once in awhile chivalry rears its handsome head. And it totally freaks me out! More from shock than disparagement, but still. I mean the man is supposed to be in a coma here, not pop up and open the door for me. It’s just completely unexpected. Yet, still pleasant. Like the other day, at school, some guy I don’t even know opened the door for me. Not a knock me over with a feather moment or anything, just enough to put a chagrined smile on my face. Another time one of my guy-friends took my hand in a gentlemanly way and kissed my knuckles. I had to seriously fight the urge to check his temperature. But the most recent cavalcade of chivalry in my life is my mother’s boyfriend. Overall, I approve of him; he’s nice. He’s total old school about some things though. Like, he pulls out our chairs and seats us at even the most casual of dinners, and he stands whenever either my mom or I stand up when we’re eating. The first time that happened I froze like the freakin deer in the headlights because I didn’t realize what he was doing. It’s nice and sweet from the daughter perspective, but I know if a boyfriend of mine did that I’d probably freak out.

Thing is, I was raised in a feminist house. So I’ve got this little voice in my head caterwauling about all the things I should do for myself. Like the last time a date offered to pay I couldn’t wrap my brain around the concept of someone else paying for me. It just seemed unfair. On one hand it’s a great gesture, but on the other I feel really awkward and almost greedy. And I’ve never understood the whole walking each other to class thing. This lack of understanding doesn’t come from a feminist place though; it’s just me being a nerd. When I go to school my focus is most often class, and the whole idea of meandering through the halls with your honey, only to stop outside the classroom and linger through the bell thereby making the other person late as well, just boggles me. Of course that could also be my obsession with being on time kicking in again, but whatever. I mean, it’s sweet and sort of charming to see but I couldn’t put myself in a similar picture. But other than that, I like the idea of chivalry. So I end up telling the little feminist voice to shut up. Besides, the white knight’s kinda cute. It would be a total waste to pull the plug on that.

Pieces, Pieces, Pieces

I am broken
And I can’t fix it
I shattered into pieces on the floor
And I’ve been picking them up
Trying to put it all back together again,
Which is hard because I wasn’t fully formed to begin with.
I have been putting the pieces in one big space
Like a million piece puzzle on a board.
One board for one puzzle—that’s how it goes.
But the puzzle never gets finished because there’s always a gap.
Too many pieces.
It’s like that for me too.
I have got a hole where the pieces I can’t find are supposed to go.
I’ve tried filling it with everything I can think of.
Clothesmoneymusicmoviesboysfriendssarcasmpictureslaughterdancing
Won’t fit.
But I really want it to.
I want to be whole again
Or at least some semblance of it.
God, why won’t any of it fit?